Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the hardware configuration of a server.
Background of the Related Art
A server may be manually configured to include a variety of hardware devices that give the server additional capability or performance. For example, additional or higher capacity memory modules, such as dual inline memory modules (DIMMs), may be inserted into a memory slot on a motherboard of the server. Input and output devices may also be provided or facilitated by installing an expansion card into another slot on the motherboard, such as a peripheral connect interface (PCI) slot. Even additional central processing units (CPUs) may be installed if the motherboard has the additional sockets.
Some devices can be manually hot plugged into a server without shutting down the server. Such devices may include external devices that are connected through a Universal Serial Bus (USB) port. However, many of the hardware devices of a server can only be manually added or removed from a server while the server is powered off. For example, physically removing a memory module or CPU while the server is running may lead to loss of data, the occurrence of numerous errors, and the like. Still, it should be recognized that each of these hardware devices is added or removed through physical handling of the hardware device or its connection.
It is desirable for a server to be populated with sufficient hardware components, such as CPUs and memory modules, in order to perform a given task or workload. However, a server with more than the required hardware components will not use power efficiently, since the un-utilized hardware components will still be consuming power. Still further, it may not be practical in any given system to have servers with many different hardware configurations just for the purpose of matching a server with a given task.